About

Ok Smart Guy! Let's See YOU Take A Crack At It! refers to a meme featuring U.S. President Joe Biden, during his time as a U.S. senator, leaning over a table, shouting and pointing, edited to have a two-piece puzzle of a smiley face and a speech bubble that says "Ok smart guy! Let's see YOU take a crack at it!" Although the photo was originally taken in 2008, the smiley face puzzle and speech bubble were added in 2009. Amid the early 2020s, the image became a notable exploitable and redraw format, gaining various edits with different characters, predominantly starting in 2022.

Origin

On October 23rd, 2008, NBC News^[1] published an article titled "Biden says McCain is getting out of control" with a photograph (taken by photographer Steve Dykes) showing then-senator Joe Biden with his left hand on the table and his right hand pointing off-screen "at a part of the crowd that he was unable to get to after a campaign rally" (shown below).

In 2009, edits of the image started to surface. For example, on Cheezeburger, ^[2][3] various edits were created, such as a demotivational poster captioned "Man loses ceeling [sic] cat" (shown below, left) and a macro with text reading, "IT'S OVER 9000!!!!" in Impact font (shown below, right).

On October 19th 2009, an edit of the photo was posted to now-defunct website iownworld.com (upload date found through TinEye cache)^[4], which added a smiley face puzzle and a speech bubble reading, "OKAY SMOT GUY!!! LET'S SEE YOU TAKE A CRACK AT IT!!!" (shown below, left). The image later in resurfaced 2019. The image had watermarks that linked to iownworld.com and a user named HippieCritic (a user with the name HippieCritic and iownworld.com exists on X,^[5] a likely creator of the meme). The image's earliest known appearance on social media was shared by X^[6] user @DaggetBeaver on February 21st, 2019.

In 2020, a variant of the image surfaced which recaptioned the speech bubble to read, "Ok smart guy! Let's see YOU take a crack at it" (shown below, right). The image's earliest known upload was shared on July 16th, 2020, by iFunnier^[7] @hf8o5oiam37860, gaining about 60 smiles in three years.

Spread

On August 1st, 2020, iFunnier^[8] @GeorgeWashingtonsGhost reposted the image with a penguin emoji in the top-left corner, gaining roughly 1,700 smiles in three years. Then, on August 9th, 2020, the image was posted by the Facebook^[9] page of Larry Elder, gaining roughly 13,000 reactions in three years.

On April 5th, 2022, Hideki Naganuma tweeted^[10] "Ok, smart guy! Let’s see YOU take a crack at it!" with a low-quality watermarked version of the later variant attached (shown below). The tweet received over 22,400 likes and 1000 retweets in 17 months. Following his tweet, edits of the image predominantly spread throughout 2022.

The earliest known was one reading, "Ok smart guy! Let's see YOU eat the gloop" (shown below, left). Its earliest known upload was shared by X^[11] user @ForcedWipepost later that same April 5th, gaining five likes in a year. On May 12th, 2022, Redditor PlaidTrack posted an edit to /r/jerma985,^[12] in which Biden was edited to be Jerma, referencing Jerma's trouble with solving puzzles, gaining over 260 upvotes in a year (shown below, right).

More elaborate redraws started to surface soon after, such as in a July 2nd, 2022 post from Tumblr^[13] user OzzyQuest, showing Spamton from Deltarune, gaining over 700 notes in a year (shown below, left). On November 12th, 2022, X^[14] user @DakDread posted a crudely-made Dr. Eggman edit, referencing the simplistic puzzles in the 2022 game Sonic Frontiers, gaining roughly 17,000 likes in a year (shown below, right).

Viral iterations and memes following the format continued to surface online going into 2023, such as on DeviantArt^[15] and Tumblr.^[16]

Various Examples

External References